Chapter 10 Training Sessions

10.1 Analyzing Need & Creating Learning Outcomes

  1. Analysing organizational need: During this initial stage, training professionalis determine what issue(s) needs to be addressed in the organization (e.g., organizational structures, skill gaps, employee relations, etc), who needs to be trained and what these employees need to be able to do. To do this, they will perform tasks such as talking with the management and employees about the organization (e.g., interviews, focus groups, surveys), reviewing documents within the organization (e.g., organizational mission statement, policies/procedures, production reports), and observing the business of the organization for a period of time (e.g., direct observations, job shadow). After thoroughly understanding the organization (including its overall management philosophy) and the training focus(es), training professionals move to the next step of the process: creating learning outcomes.
  2. Creating learning outcome (s): Learning outcome are the framework for the training session, identifying what employees will be able to do after engaging in the training session.

The training session learning outcomes should be concise, measureable, and identify one major job-related outcome. When writing the outcome statement begin with the wording “ After completing this training session, employee-learners will be able to……….”

Vague learning outcome: After completing this training session, employee-learners will be able to deal with customer complaints and act professional.

There are many ways an individual may interpret what it means to “act professional”, thus this learning outcome is not sufficiently measurable as written

Better learning outcome. After completing this training session, employee-learners will be able to use skills of responding nondefensively to criticism when dealing with difficult customers.

Because there are a specific suite of skills for responding nondefensively to criticism (e.g., skills in this reader), one can identify whether employees use these skills after a training session, thus this is measurable.

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